I hope you were wondering where I was! I’m back and have Cervantino Journal #3 for you. The three shows I’m writing about today involved smiles on everyone’s faces, traditional music and a dance performance from a local company.
On October 8th, exactly one week ago, I experienced the finest expression of liberty and happiness in the form of Osian Meilir’s Qweerin. The performance started at Plaza Allende and worked its way through the streets to Teatro Juárez.
Meilir’s Welsh dance company walked into Plaza Allende donning tall black hats that covered their faces with only openings for their eyes. The area of each dancer’s eyes had black makeup making their appearance seem mysterious.
There were six dancers. Since identity is part of this intoxicating work, I don’t want to assign a gender to any of them.
Very restricted movement gradually gave way to less confined movement. Was this a group of people gradually freeing themselves from oppression?
As liberation, as I interpreted it, became more of their reality, the growing crowd was encouraged to follow them through the streets. Like Pied Pipers, more people couldn’t resist the temptation to join the parade.
The dancing was building in energy but reached its zenith when we arrived at Teatro Juárez. This was a no-holds-barred celebration of self, identity and the sizeable crowd that seemed to only get bigger throughout this 35-minute affirmation of being alive.
Perhaps my favorite part was when they encouraged people from the audience to join them in their dance. Admittedly, some were far better at following directions than others. What mattered most was there were no labels, there was no judgment, there was only joy.
On October 9th I found my way to Jardín San Pedro to see Grupo Yolotecuani perform Sones y canciones de Guerrero. They hail from Guerrero, Mexico and this was an hour of traditional music performed passionately by the five-person band.
I’m not an expert in the music of Guerrero. But I didn’t need to be. The pleasure and passion with which this music was performed was irresistible.
Maria Isabel “Ada” Coronel Vélez was the captivating lead singer. Osvaldo Iván Peñaloza Coronel played a mean guitar and did some percussion. Cesar Martínez was on bass. David Peñaloza García played harp.
The standout for me was Héctor Maya on violin. He blew me away. Whether playing ferociously (as he often did) or quietly and movingly, what he was able to do makes him one of the finest violinists I’ve seen.
Two dancers, whose names I sadly could not find, joined on the tarima, a wooden platform that also serves to add percussion to the music.
It was wet. It was raining and sitting in the front row often meant the wind would blow the rain right onto me. Too bad, Mother Nature. That did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for this show.
We did plan to see Beauty and the Beast, the Philip Glass opera, the next evening, but opted to stay dry instead.
My plans to attend the festival uninterrupted were upended by the need to go to Southern California for a memorial service.
Here are the shows I wish I could have seen while I was away:
Carmen de Antonio Gades y Carlos Saura; Camerata Salzburg with violinist Maria Dueñas (if you don’t know her, you should check out her recordings), Jesse Baez from Guatemala, Momi Maiga’s Kairo from Senegal and the Ballet Folklórico de México.
You know me, it took no time to get back up and running after returning to Guanajuato on October 13th.
On Wednesday evening it was off to the Auditorio del Estado for Delay by Guanajuato company Physical Momentum.
This was my first time in this beautiful theater. I will definitely have to see more performances there. Thankfully the closing day has a performance I hope to attend.
Francisco Córdova is the director and choreographer of Delay. This dance piece begins with a giant moon in the center of the stage. There is dim lighting and the dancers gradually take their places on stage and in relation to that moon.
The ensemble broke into singles and pairs and reformed as an ensemble multiple times. All of it was impressive to watch. The dancing was everything you’d want in a performance: synchronized, when necessary and quite often athletic.
Plus it was graceful in moments where we all needed a pause to consider what we were watching.
Two smaller planets joined the oversized moon on the stage. The three celestial bodies would move around each other and the dancers would move around them.
What did it all mean? I couldn’t tell you. But I found the performance captivating.
We’re heading into the final stretch of Cervantino for this year. Stay tuned for more
Main Photo: Qweerin in front of Teatro Juárez
All photos by Craig L. Byrd